


this is what happens (when the curtains are drawn)

by parareve



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: A lot - Freeform, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And a damn lot of subtext, And an orchestra of emotional ice and fire, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Canon Disabled Character, Conflict Resolution, Discussions around cyberization and some full ghost in the shell vibes, Divorce-similar themes with a child in the middle, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Ethical Dilemmas, Fai is not happy about anything, General cw for the following:, Heavy Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Including curse, Kurogane does what he wants, Makeup Sex, Mokona is too pure for it all, Multi, Parental figures can't keep it together and their son is also Not Happy, Piffle World, Post-Series, Post-TRC/Pre/during-TWC plotline (ish??), Prosthetics, Social Commentary, Struggles with disability acceptance/identity, Who ends up kicking these disasters into shape, and a whole lot of chocolate espresso bean bittersweetness, no one is happy, so many arguments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 06:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17523752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parareve/pseuds/parareve
Summary: “Let me make one thing clear,” he seethes, dangerously quiet, and the air crackles with the first strikes of lightning, Syaoran’s own shoulders drawn uncomfortably still in the unwanted space between them, goldish eyes flicking quick from one to the other. “I’m not going to hear one morewordout of you until you are in a chair, andthatis off.”Kurogane’s eyes barely touch his own as his nostrils flare with a silent breath, jaw clenched shut.“Got that?” rumbles Fai.





	this is what happens (when the curtains are drawn)

It is with the aimless frenzy of a storm awakening that Mokona’s magic descends upon them.

Desert sun blurs into tails of watered ink, the fabric of their world’s reality tearing into fat drops of crystallized light; the sickening swoop starts in their toes and washes fast to their tongues, gravity lost quicker than their lungs can flutter as their stomachs sweep to their throats.

Kurogane’s touch clings still to his forearm, blisteringly tight where receptors have short-circuited; he is dirtied and chest heaving and eyes clenched shut, the drumming pulse of panic lingering still beneath his breast as the entourage of painted hitmen before them blow swift into dust. Fai bites down the wince its strength builds, feeling flesh bruise and muscles clench, the golden thread buried within his being stringing to alertness at the slightest threat of harm (even if it is by the man he loves; even if he doesn’t realize, cannot _know_ ).

The world of Ilgaria leaves them. It is only the flutter of a heartbeat before Piffle’s skyline appears.

The city welcomes their arrival with the same chaotic grace it had nearly eight months prior; midnight-glossed grids clatter beneath their feet as the transmutation releases just a touch too high, boots stumbling for traction against the glass of solar cells. The effort it takes to draw attention is little to none; a crowd blooms away from them like fleeing fish from a shark, silence falling sharp and stunned as countless pairs of eyes fixate on them with morbid wonder.

Against the stark pallor of streets that vein through a map of modern innovation, they look—fittingly—otherworldly: ragged-clothed and muddied skin and hands raw from weeks’ worth of hard labor, even Mokona’s own pearlish tint unusually dark from her aiding efforts. Only seconds lapse until gaping whispers turn to phones raised, and the tension that strings firm between shoulders burned red-brown against harsh desert sun speaks enough for all of them, that they cannot wait, cannot just stay _standing_ (in this city, news travels fast; they had learned quick enough that Tomoyo, for all her flaws of passion—the one that owned this world, who spoke in electric tongues and danced beneath sharp silhouettes—had never been one to leave them waiting.)

Salvation comes in the form of an unmarked limousine, skittering quick off from the main drag. They clamber into the dark, one after another, the crowd abandoned behind them; the sickening strength of fresh synthetic leather and carpet cleaner is suffocating, foreign in its sterility and desperately familiar.

The door claps shut into a realm of shadowed silence, Kurogane’s fingers a whitened grip where they yank gleaming metal closed, and wedged into the space beside him, Fai breathes for the first time.

“ “ “

In their most recent lottery of world-hopping, landing upon Piffle is a godsend.

Peace, in all its forms, had grown to be a rare gift in traveling, let alone being able to indulge in such luxuries as a plush mattress and a hot shower. For all his own aching desires to grab the first ready-made meal he could find and melt into nothing but a pillowy bathrobe, Fai (though known as he was for cloudy notions and an imagination that rivaled children) was built upon a rationality of steel, and had been quick to deter attention to priorities.

(It had been established on their last impromptu return here that Piffle’s amenities were, first and foremost, for repairs; as such, a quick rinse and a fresh change of clothes were the only tastes of relaxation they could place upon their tongues before Tomoyo was marching them across the gleaming halls of the Piffle Princess’s Cybertechnic Ward.)

“And, of course, we’ll need to update your sensory panel, as well,” chirps its dazzlingly cheery CEO. As the head of a corporation that effectively owned the entirety of the country, with the signature of _PPC_ stamped across every cell of pink microchipping that fueled the very cycles of day and night, Fai was often unnerved (and, in the very least, _amazed_ ) at the blinding precision with which someone so young could spew a technological language he had not the faintest fluency in. “And we’ve just created a new line of microfiber wiring—it’s an amazing breakthrough, we’ve spent years and years funding for developmental research—oh, and not to mention we’ve had recent innovations with our exoskeleton design!”

Kurogane, recipient of this information, takes her words through one ear and cast them deftly out the other. His eyes are cut firmly away when Fai glances across him, lips carved into a thin line; at his side, his hand flexes into a tense dance of fingertips across a palm unmarked, synthetic skin shredded at the knuckles to bare bones of iron and veins of glowing wire, flowing eerily into an exposed ripple of joint and tendon.

Ilgaria had brought them into the world of the mafia, for not the first time in their most recent quest. By day, the heat turned skin to ash and food to rot; by night, the desert bred scavengers and thieves. Handcrafted cybertechnics had become the currency of the underworld, and so to find out one rat in the cell had parts greater than the rest made rivalries an understatement.

They had escaped, if by the skin of their teeth, but the damage had been done; Fai had watched for days on end as Kurogane denied any pain the violent attempts at salvaging had cost him, shoulder drawn stiff and ruddy eyes distant, all while the stench of blood stung in his nostrils and burned in his throat.

(He had never thought a man with such _strength_ , who bled virtue like leaves dripped dew and poured harsh truth like fresh rain, would resort to lying so blatant, spewing falseness from behind lips drawn thin despite spending countless nights fighting to reverse such habits in the very man his denial had since become a deterrent to. To say such hypocrisy stung would be to call the crackling roar of a wildfire warm.

Yet to have tables turned, now, after every shred of hell their journey had torn between them, increasingly felt like nothing more than a trial of heart—a payment for his own wretched behavior, and sickeningly fair.)

Fai tears his eyes away, anger boiling still beneath his lungs as Tomoyo prattles on, unaware.                                   

“Cyberization has lead to an entire transformation around prosthetic culture—it’s been amazing, really!” she says, and her violet eyes fix upon him with such unabashed joy that he can do nothing but force a kind smile for her, despite his own aimless floatings through unknown references. “And it’s opened so many doors to testing—we’ve even started a benefit fund, and it’s created a whole movement in itself!”

“Really?” Fai murmurs, lilting softly enough to sound interested. His eyes dart back to where a tattered fist of skin and blood clenches into stone; at the man’s side, Syaoran saunters down a path of his own making, long since detouring from the technological jargon to marvel at the architecture that spills out beyond the endless seam of glass beside them. The boy’s hazel eyes are pulled away only once, when the heat of another’s close enough to tingle becomes too pressing; Fai’s eyes skitter over his own, for only a moment, before flicking forward again.

“Well, here we are!” hums Tomoyo, heels twirling into an abrupt serenade of clicks as one freshly-manicured hand guides his attention across the glowing signs above them. “The O&P facility is right down this hall, and the lobby is just down the other way, 10th floor in the West Wing—oh, you will come to the banquet tonight, won’t you?”

Somewhere through her windstorm of information, Fai recalls, distantly, something about a dinner; his smile lingers at the corners, weaker, as he searches fruitlessly for a polite excuse to decline.

“Of course, Tomoyo-sama,” is what he says, instead of _No_ —and pulsing beneath his blood he can feel the heat of an anger that is not his own, shifting from cold-calm to burning-hot. The musk of black cardamom stings pepperish beneath his skin, and the vampire within tremors at its taste, all too aware of the frustration that has steadily built in the man behind him with every step they’ve taken.

Fai’s jaw is tight, and his eyes are tired, and the power move feels flat where he takes the reins in the face of it—but the gentle crease of his mouth assures little else than _Yes, we’re so grateful, why wouldn’t we?_

“Oh, wonderful!” Tomoyo sings, and there is something in her eyes that glints knowingly, even forgivingly, as the lines of her smile soften into an unspoken _Thank you_.

(It is business more than courtesy, and Fai knows that the most of them all.)

He nods, and waves, and whispers his thanks as she bows with well-wishes and a friendly _Bai bai!_ The conversation dies on a half-smile and is abandoned with the clitter of her heels, vanishing back down the way they came, and Fai turns slow to Kurogane with heart heavy and brow pinched.

(The confrontation has been building from the moment they landed, a sour thing in both his stomach and that of the man before him, and he waits, dreading when it will rear its head into an ugly flame.)

His eyes linger, unacknowledged, against the side of a hollowed cheekbone where dark hair peppers through faintly scarred skin, the practicality of a shave a lost quality after weeks of sweat and metalwork, and it is the refusal of auburn eyes to even glance his way that sends venom curdling behind his teeth and knuckles twisting tight.

Fai turns away, voice quick to sharpen to ice.

“Let me make one thing clear,” he seethes, dangerously quiet, and the air crackles with the first strikes of lightning, Syaoran’s own shoulders drawn uncomfortably still in the unwanted space between them, goldish eyes flicking quick from one to the other. “I’m not going to hear one more _word_ out of you until you are in a chair, and _that_ is off.”

Kurogane’s eyes barely touch his own as his nostrils flare with a silent breath, jaw clenched shut.

“Got that?” rumbles Fai.

Mountain-cold eyes snap to ones of simmering ash, and there is no room for his lover to stick one foot into even the outskirts of excuses, the path paved beneath his feet whether he wants it or not.

He walks it, stiffly, without saying a word. It only takes a moment for Syaoran to follow.

“ “ “

“You don’t have to stay,” Kurogane says quietly, when the apprehensive flicker of hazel eyes returns for the third time to the shrill _blitz_ of a gleaming needle as it extends down from its host. Its light intensifies into a spark of electric blue as metal worms into flesh only squintably artificial, drilling deep enough into hairline seams to ignite a patchwork of sapphire circuits that vein beneath synthetic skin; exposed fingers twitch, ruddy eyes flinching only slightly at a grimace as the numbing solution its bite feeds him rushes to sooth the pounding of blood and bone beneath.

“No, no,” Syaoran reassurances, though the unsettled fascination that pinches the boy’s brows lingers as his eyes watch the hanging machinery (dubbed _ANE_ by the robotics developer, prattling on some distance behind them to a half-listening Fai) move into a fluid trance. “It’s…fine.”

A new quartet of needles spiral from tiny doors that whir open from the robot’s mounted limb; their points hover into rectangular formation, chirping dully with the beeps of its sensory laser until aligning with keyholes unseen beneath glowing skin. Multi-digit extenders clatter from their ends, driving with frightening precision into invisible ports, and the smothering ache of their pressure blurs into a wash of dizzying nothingness as metal fibers split from nerve and vein.

(The sensation is one of few Kurogane will tolerate, least of all the sharp point of an arrow or the nick of a close blade, and most forgiving the inhuman, blistering bite of fanged teeth and the swooping rush of lightheaded heat that so often follows.

The increasingly modern innovation of mechanized needles falls nowhere between, and it draws a sickening vertigo upon him of the night that had passed seemingly moments before, when he had woken with a knife to his throat and the searing heat of an electric dagger knifing between the joint of synthetic elbow and wired vein; when he had driven knuckle to blade, his own shortsword drawn, and let the skin of his flesh tear beneath the white-hot shock of it as its point sparked against metal bone.)

“ _Otousan_?”

(His fingers grapple, aimless in their instinctive jolt to escape.

The phantom tingling of a limb no longer there is strong enough to make his head swim.)

“I’m fine,” he bites out, when the words come back to him.

For all his growing years, the boy remains perhaps too forgiving in the face of lies so bald-faced even _he_ can see them. However, those eyes do not shy away, too much destruction seen already to feel discomforted at the sight of a severed limb now bared. His eyes follow the slow swoop of the robot maneuvering across the ceiling, carrying cargo now lifeless to the operation table waiting empty for it; he turns back then, and smiles, and it is still a youthful thing, a strange reminder of the child that lingers beneath a face long since sharpened into that of a growing man.

“I know,” Syaoran says, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Don’t tell _Chichi_ that.”  

The reaction the name draws is immediate, frustration dripping down a spine drawn rigid as bloody eyes snap away.

“I will _tell him_ what he _needs_ to—”

The words die off, swallowed down as their object of reference walks into the conversation, fair hands tucked beneath beige pockets as blue eyes flit over them both.

“Takashi-san said repairs shouldn’t take more than an hour,” Fai murmurs, after a pause. “Syaoran-kun, why don’t you go upstairs and relax for a bit? I’m sure Sakura-chan would love to hear from you.”

The suggestion settles slowly, a subtle _leave us_ peppered through a quiet encouragement for self-pampering; it is an opportunity the boy can’t pass up, not with true solitude being a rare gift in the hellish months that had been their most recent travels, and hazel eyes glitter in delight at the mere encouragement, unable to resist.

(Kurogane’s own narrow, seeing clear through to the manipulation that lingers beneath the action, even if in its sweetest forms.)

“Alright,” Syaoran hums, fighting down his excitement into a barely-contained smile as he stands from his seat. “I’ll be sure to catch her up on everything, I know she’ll want to hear all about it! Oh, and I _know_ she’ll be excited to hear we made it to Piffle—she probably misses Tomoyo-sama, too—”

“Syao-kun,” Fai murmurs, mouth teasing at a curve just slightly bemused.

“R-Right! Right,” the boy stammers, the image broken; he is a blushing fool by the time he clambers well to his feet, smile unrestrained and eyes bright. “Will I see you at dinner?”

“I should assume so,” Fai chuckles dryly, “Our hostess may have our heads, otherwise.”

The tease pokes a wider smile onto Syaoran’s face and draws a slightly disapproving snort in response, the gleam of his joy something Fai drinks in with as much energy as he can muster as he watches him turn with hand extended to a bounding Mokona and wave a quick goodbye, gone as calmly as he can.

(The happiness sings through Fai’s heart, only a moment, as he basks in the gratitude that the boy he has come to love so much like a son can have a cheerful moment to share with his lover.

The conversation with his own will be much less pleasant.)

He fills the empty space left behind in uncomfortable silence, sinking slow to the chair canted by Kurogane’s own with fingers wandering to pick at navy sleeves. Metallic chinks and buzzing whirls echo too loudly from one corner of the ward, where metal limb has been taken and human fingers have turned to prod and pick; ruddy eyes stay rigid on the floor, and Fai stares bleakly at them, at a loss for anything to say.

(He tries, with everything in his power, to find some sense of distraction—his eyes bounce to an unmasked cabinet of shelved prosthetics, then to a wall of more robotic arms wired to a ceiling of black glass, to the window beyond, to the skyline—something, _anything_ , to take his eyes off the bared stump of a bandaged shoulder, and the bleach of sterilization that masks the copperish bite of blood beneath.)

The efforts at avoidance are staunchly ignored as Kurogane flicks one palm across the linen of his pants, awkward where his fingers hover without a place to land.

“Are we going to talk about it or not?” he says gruffly.

Fai’s mouth plays at a half-smile as his eyes turn away, voice rustling coolly, “You say that like you’ll actually talk to me.”

“Tough shit, huh.”

The words come weighted and blunt, a bitter-cold crack, reference clear and smile gone—and Fai just _stares_ , ripped silent at the backhandedness.

He blinks at the floor, and then turns away, shoulders stiff.

“I’m doing this for _you_ ,” he says, when the silence becomes too suffocating to bear.

“You don’t have to _do_ anything,” Kurogane bites back, fingertips clenched and unfurling. “It’s not about that—”

“Then what _is_ it about?” snaps Fai. It’s sharp, cutting from his teeth louder than intended; fury simmers on his tongue and he swallows it down, an uncomfortable knot that sticks in his throat as he blinks quiet at the tense shift of broad shoulders, the distant flicker of dark eyes.

He lingers on tapping fingers and a shirt half-undone just a moment too long, and he cannot save the way his lover _sees_ , bloody eyes reignited with an exasperated huff.

“Will you stop looking at it,” Kurogane grits.

“What?”

“Like _that_.”

Fai clenches his fists, voice sharpening. “Like _what_?”

“ _Like that_.”

“Do you think I’m ashamed to see it?” The sting of disgust burns deep beneath pale eyes as Fai fixes his lover with a harsh glare. “Is that it?”

Kurogane stares away, fist drawn tight. “You’re doin’ a pretty damn good job of avoiding it, if that’s what you mean.”

Frustration burns over him like new earth from cooled lava, and Fai swallows down a building roar, eyes squeezing shut as a tense breath slithers from his lips. He laces his fingers between his knees, thumbs skittering light and heel tapping as he turns away, glaring cold at glossy lines of reflection etched into seamless tile.

“I don’t like seeing you in _pain_ ,” he forces out, words coming muddy as his eyes flick back to ruddy-brown. “If that bothers you, maybe take a minute and grow a better sense of judgment.”

Kurogane takes the jab like a swallow of over-steeped tea, strong and sour and viciously unpleasant; his eyes narrow as they fix upon the floor, wallowing into stiff silence once more.

From the corner hums the sizzling cracks and _tick-tick-ticks_ of metalwork and electrical rewiring; as much shame knots into Fai’s gut at the discomfort of having an audience, the noise is comforting, just enough of a gap to let him recollect his thoughts and walk on, no matter how the tension strings thick within him.

“I’ve been trying to talk to you, for _weeks_ ,” he says, head hung and voice muted. “I’m trying to understand what I’m doing wrong—”

“You aren’t doing _anything_ ,” Kurogane mutters, fingers fisting tight through the wrinkles of pale linen. “I already told you, it’s not _about_ that.”

“I need to know what it’s _about_!”

Fai’s eyes jolt up to those of his lover, an ice-cold shock of power unbridled and strength just slightly inhuman, anger burning into a rush of unrestraint—and it is something he cannot look away from, throat bobbing quick and firm.

“Ever since it happened, you’ve been making it something it’s not,” Kurogane says at last, voice gritting and low, “And I’m sick of seeing you beat yourself up over it.”

“Making it something it’s _not_?” Fai huffs, incredulous, “ _You’ve_ been refusing to even _see it_. You can’t just stare me the eye, after you did something like _that_ for me, and keep denying what it’s done to you.”

It’s the start of a tirade, and by the time the words have left him, he is tremoring and throat raw, eyes sharp as glass.

“It’s not about whether I’m _grateful_ , or whether I’m ashamed, or whether I’m just fucking _hurt_ — _you_ aren’t taking care of yourself, _at all_ ,” he thunders on. “Because you don’t see it as a change, because you don’t _care_. When the vampire blood was first within me, I wanted to rip it out with my bare hands, and you knew it. I was ready to just let go—I had been ready, _waiting_ , for years—and, sure, I may have starved myself through those first few months, because I didn’t want to accept it—I didn’t want to have _that_ be my reality—but you put me on my feet and kept me going. You gave me _hope_. You let me accept and _move on_.”

Kurogane’s jaw draws tight across gritted teeth, the hollows of his cheeks flexed taunt. Across from him, Fai’s chest shudders with a great heaving breath, eyes blinking fast and fingers knotted firm into fists.

“And now,” he spits out, gaze cut away, “You’re not even giving me the _chance_ to do the same.”

The outburst burns steadily beneath his core, taking only a staggering heartbeat to propel him to his feet (Kurogane’s eyes on him like a flame’s touch, ignored), and he stalks away with blood boiling, back to the corner, any further chance of conversation gone.

“ “ “

It is only Syaoran’s beaming grin that greets them on the thirty-second floor (the elevator handrail clenched too tight between metal fingers, over-sensitized in their newness to the touch of hot-cold and the sterile acidity that bleaches the air, steel beam squeaked roughly away from a clenched palm when wide doors hiss open to dark carpet and bright light) that saves them from their own crippling silence; the boy is all laughter and dizzying energy, a maelstrom of questions for dress codes and cuisines, and Fai greets them all with small smiles and quiet responses as they beeline back to their rooms to change.

He can only assume the banquet will be formal—something Syaoran bemoans like a grubbish child, and the man whose traits he has so absorbed no doubt encourages, his own expression a seemingly permanent scowl accompanied by stiff motions and voiceless huffs of agreement.

Fai sends their complaining into their respective bathrooms, the boy shooed to his own room across the way along with a cheering Mokona (no doubt set on crafting the most ridiculous attire possible for her brooding companion), and Kurogane wordlessly yanking their own bathroom door shut behind him. The quiet that settles has become so familiar that its strength is enough to send the pressure in Fai’s skull numbing (because there is nothing left for him, now; nothing but to power through, to keep _moving_ ).

They all have a closet of short supply, so he makes do with what he has, shirt shucked from his skin to trade for a crisper button-down of bleached white, sleeves rolled and slacks cuffed to give his skin some shred of room to breathe.

His fingers draw buttons closed, one by one, starting at the last and ending unfinished at his collarbone, fingers weighted heavily as the sounds of clattering emerge from beneath the bathroom door.

(He focuses, distantly, on a towel slopped harsh to a counter and soap clapped down firm, and his heart _aches_ —a painful, gritting thing at the distance that feels so irreparable, spread between them like thick paint across a canvas half-finished.)

He sighs, a broken thing that cuts from his chest, eyes heavy and throat raw.

(He is desperate not to lose it, any of it—not to lose his lover’s trust, his care, his _everything_ —while battling firm to do the same.)

The bathroom door clacks open, and Kurogane walks out, a silent beast unleashed; dark hair speckles across his face, only minorly groomed in the effort to save time, but it paints a ruggedness across him that makes Fai’s breath stutter even still, despite everything. Black cotton carves his body into lean lines of muscle and bone, slacks hanging slim to broad hips and tanned fingers working with rough precision to snap cuffs back and draw links closed, even with the pinch at his mouth deepening.

Those fingers fiddle, newborn—a curse starts in his throat as they slip into a tremoring tear, cutting short and sharp from his teeth when the button is sent sailing into a clattering ring upon the floor, threads torn and hand clenching helplessly.

“Fucking _hell_ —”

Kurogane sighs, a weary thing, rumbling low with frustration. It doesn’t take a second thought for Fai to stoop to his ankles and pick the button from the floor, free hand reaching out steady and firm as he comes back to his feet to clasp a tanned wrist within it.

“I’ve got it,” Kurogane mutters, but it sounds so pitifully false that Fai can do nothing but shoot him a quiet look, brow furrowing softly.

Magic gleams from his fingers with a wordless spell, violet and iridescent as it circles black plastic and loose thread. The concentration it draws from him is minimal, a quiet hum of power as his thumb skitters over the taunt ridge of one tendon and his fingers circle the wide breadth of firm knuckles beneath.

This hand is _real_ , warm and blood and alive, and against the dark width of it his own willowy fingers are nearly dwarfed; he swallows slowly at even the smallest chance of touch, even as domestic as this, as his magic binds rip to seam. His fingertips work slowly to ease the button through the sleeve, and with the quiet _snap_ of its backing padding to the fabric, his touch lingers, caught gently over the callouses of fingerprint and palm.

(He cannot bear to let his eyes wander, to see the expression that may be fixed upon him for indulging like this, with things as they are; yet he cannot stop the way the pads of his fingers caress, tracing down the valleys of familiar skin whose touch has so often laid claim to him, guided him, bleeding through his clothes questions of _Are you alright?_ and _Stay here_ and _Come on_ and _Do you want this?_ —and he is helpless from the way he follows every line until hovering across the ridges of hardened fingertips, voicelessly crying out _I still do I still do I still do_.)

The heat of his lover’s gaze makes his skin tremor, but its spell is broken by the door rattling open; Syaoran enters, dressed nicely enough and hair a wildly unusual mess of hairspray and attempted styling. His face contorts in an expression that explains without even having to drop the culprit, and Mokona, perched upon his shoulder, is no doubt a gloating villain, happily taking pride in his ghoulish state.

“Isn’t Syao-kun’s hair just _beeeautiful_?” she coos, and shamelessly enjoys the plummeting arch of the boy’s shoulders with a crowing giggle.

“You look just fine,” Fai assures, “Now, come on, we don’t want to be late.”

“But— _but_ —” Syaoran splutters, “I don’t know, I tried—oh! Sakura-chan said hi, and that she misses you both very much, but _augh_ , I wish I had asked _her_ for advice instead of _you_ —” It’s here the boy casts the little creature pillowed upon him a petulant sneer, only earning a chortling _Ufufufu_ in response.

His prattling is silenced in the form of a large hand clamping upon his head, twisting with reckless abandon through almond locks; the boy fumbles into a blushing stupor, caught off guard by the toughish indicator to _quiet_ as Kurogane walks past him, holding the door open for them all.

“Come on,” he hums, mutely and firm, but the quirk of his mouth assures—more to the kid than anything—that _It’s fine, go_ , as the boy leads the band of them with quick steps.

“I hope they’ll have something with chicken,” Syaoran muses as he flattens out his shirt, voice echoing already across the empty hall.

Fai smiles a little to himself at the childishness that still shines bright from him, straightening his own sleeves before moving to follow; his steps carry him in a blind line forward, and it is only when he crosses the path of the man before him that waits with door patiently held open (weighed against fingers spread of iron and wire, deceivingly hidden beneath skin that looks no different than before—but those knuckles are no longer exposed, and that hand no longer clenched, and the muscle that veins beneath the bends of dark cloth is as familiar to Fai as the arm of flesh and bone that waits still at his side) that he falters.

The lines of his shirt do nothing to conceal the swallow of a toned neck and the golden plane of tanned skin that dips down from throat to collar. Seeing even the barest hint of exposure in such an area is usually enough to pull Fai’s attention faltering, the thread of the beast beneath stirring to alertness at the memory, the scent, the _taste_ , so quick to become intoxicated at the barest suggestion of having his mouth on him—but the lust that usually sweeps across his control at such a sight falls cold, swallowed by a desperate, strangling need to linger, to _capture_.

(Kurogane’s scent here is musk and earth and sage and spice, a mixture of not-yet-cleaned skin that is heady and raw, and the oils they have collected through the worlds to stash in small bags for occasions like these, sweet-smelling and herbed; beneath it all lies the pulse of his aura, mountain foothills and damp forest paths and burnt clove and pine, the magic buried within fluttering aimless at the recognition of another.)

It brings with it an endless host of memory and _fear_ —of losing it all, of tarnishing what they have, all over such petty things as this—and he is still and silent and heart thundering, a nervous twitch in his fingers, before a broad shoulder bends and a hand hot as steamed coals hovers to glide soft over his back, a gentle nudge.

Fai starts, blinking rapid at the touch (far too unexpected and far too _needed_ ), and he casts a quick glance, wide-eyed, to the quiet flicker of bloody-brown and the slight clench of closed teeth beneath them.

Kurogane’s palm lingers (even when he stutters into motion, cheeks abruptly pink) at the small of his back, only for a step or two, before sliding away—but it is _enough_.

(He is not the only one longing to show that it still matters; that he still _wants_.)

They walk together, just slightly off-kilter from being side-by-side.

The quietness feels lighter.

“ “ “

The fork jitters helplessly between Kurogane’s clenching fingers, a narrow fish squeezed out of water.

(His face burns, he can feel it, and it pulls a twitch in his cheek as he clanks points to plate, knife scraping hard enough to groove.)

Fai’s face squishes into a grimace at the scratching shriek of ceramic against steel, shoulders jumping and head bouncing away. The man beside him has to force down a gritty curse, and slowly chooses to grubble instead, breath huffing shallow and broad shoulders shifting as new-fingers pinch at the fork’s stem, wavering between a puppish prod and an infant smack of full-strength.

“Do you want me to help?” Fai whispers.

“ _No_.”

“Don’t forget to save room for our dessert!” Tomoyo announces, and the crowd of thirty-some representatives gathered around their table _ooh_ and _ahh_ at the flavors that follow, candied lemon cheesecake and blueberry-mint sorbet, and a whole host of flowery options that carve a scowl deeper into Kurogane’s jaw.

(He _hated_ sweets.

At least the chicken was good.)

He figured the kid would spontaneously combust when their first entrée was announced to be his dream meal of the night, an odd lovechild of _yakitori_ and grainy dishes from the northern regions, slathered in fragrant oil and strong herbs; Syaoran had yet to slow his pace, happily stuffing his face with as many bites of the meat and lavish spread of sides accompanying it as possible.

“My, Syaoran-kun—it must have been a while since lunch, hm?

Tomoyo’s giggle is gentle and bright as she draws the boy’s mortified attention (served the brat right, mannerless as he was being), and Syaoran blubbers into a flustered mess, pulling countless peels of laughter that do enough to mask the fact that it had, in fact, been going on three days since they had all had a full meal.

“We are so very grateful you joined us,” she continues, reddish lips stretching happily at a grin as she nods her head at Syaoran’s fumbling bows of thanks. “It’s guests like you all that make _Piffle Princess_ really mean something, you know. At least to me. Why—from the moment we got it off it’s feet—”

With the start of a brewing speech, she soars to her toes, strawberry champagne fizzling high in one manicured hand as the other braces sudden to keep her thundering heart from leaving her. This world’s version of her was certainly a creature of impulse, much more outspoken than his own soft-smiled _miko_ , and Kurogane has to fight down the urge to bury his hairline in his palm as she prattles on, Fai’s own eyes blinking owlishly at her sudden ascent to heaven. Syaoran’s attention hangs on her every heaving word as his mouth bobbles through his next few bites, unphased.

“—and what a small thing it started as, but of course, without any of you, there’s not a chance in the _world_ we would be where we are now! Why, I _remember_ —oh, it was—it was September 14th, 2035, after the worst summer _ever_ , when I ran into that ridiculous postage shop on the corner of 32nd—”

(The alcohol, to no one’s surprise, had hit her.)

Half-listening and quickly detached, Fai draws a sip from his own overfilled glass of wine, blood-red and bitterly dry, a decidedly strong move for his own sparse selection of greens and grains. His attention was threaded elsewhere: the clumsy _clunk_ of the champagne class between meaty fingers farther down from him, drawing a squeaky bounce from Mokona’s own stuffed plate; the cluster of friendly investors nodding off to their patron’s drunken ramblings, while _click-clicking_ though more pressing notifications beneath the table; the sudden cloud of powder mushrooming around a white-haired head near the opposite end of the table, hissed chiding following her need for touch-ups through dinner; the rustling sigh building in tense abdomen and broad chest that slithers out from the man beside him, as fork and knife are abandoned for the beer by his plate.

(Kurogane was not known for small-talk, especially when occupied with a beverage dark enough to match the wild spikes of his hair—so it had come as no surprise that any attempts at conversation by the strangers around them were met with little encouragement.)

The latest effort is by a woman with attractively sharp features and forearms carved into lines of gold, flowing hair pooled into a jet-black knot.

(If Fai stares slightly for the way her elbows brace to the table, palm-to-chin and smirk slanting, voice smooth as sweetened coffee, he feels no shame when the man beside him quirks a brow her direction.)

“That arm of yours,” she hums, with a short nod, “Piffle-made, huh?”

Kurogane blinks, brows flatlining into a slight furrow.

“These?” she continues, raising to bare her forearms like gleaming trophies. “Got them five years ago. Had a nasty case in South Kota, both of them got torn up. Your little friend here—she made me brand new. Better than brand new, actually. It’s amazing, what they’re doing—I’m tellin’ ya, give it a few years, this’ll revolutionize _everything_.”

Wired fingers snap to a golden wrist with a broad grin, the metallic clap of their touch drawing the eyes of two others beside her.

“My overseer in pyrotechnics just got a partial brain transfer,” the man to her left adds, leaning onto the table with eyes gleaming bright, “She’s _amazing_. Doesn’t even need a display anymore, her cybernet runs right through her vision! It takes her _minutes_ to do research now, honestly, it’s crazy cool—”

“Right?”

“And my boss,” the women to her right chirps in, “He lost his leg in a traffic accident—now he can’t stop talking about his prosthetic! He says he wants to get the other replaced, too, just to do it!”

“Get it replaced?” Kurogane echoes, beer clunking quietly to the table.

“Yeah, lots of people in the city are doing it now! I mean, the advantages are just unbeatable—athletes, police, doctors, you name it!”

The conversation bubbles across the table, taking no effort at all to be picked up by agreeing heads. Kurogane’s attention returns to his plate, jaw tense.

“Fai-san,” Syaoran hums, his own plate all but licked clean and lighter beer half-empty, “Tomoyo-sama sure is talking a lot.”

“Yes, and she will continue to,” Fai sighs, turning to give the boy a bemused smile and creasing eyes. He takes another slow sip of his wine. “You don’t have to pay attention, just to be polite. She’s not talking to you, right now.”

“Ah.”

Kurogane draws his fork into his left hand once more, knife handle curling firm into his right.

“She ain’t talking to anyone but herself, at this point,” he grunts, pressing knife to charred meat with a steady nudge of thumb and forefinger. The fork is slower to get there.

“Give her _some_ kind of credit,” Fai muses. “Provided your princess didn’t have so many eyes on her, I’m sure she would be just as outspoken.”

“Give her _sake_ , and she would be,” Kurogane spits out, the conversation bubbled around them still distantly heard as he stabs his chicken to his plate, “Swore that off years ago, during her purification rite—sister’s another thing.”

“But imagine if you could replace your hands? As an artist, just the skills of having mechanics at your fingertips—”

Tanned fingers fumble, cut meat swinging too far out of depth. Kurogane yanks his head back, a subtle thing, but caught clear enough when blue eyes turn with a cautious frown.

“But the advancements they’re making with memory alone, or even your organs—I mean, disease in it’s entirety could change, right?”

“I’m going to look at dessert,” Syaoran hums, standing up from Kurogane’s right. “Want anything?”

“No, thank you,” Fai murmurs, giving a short smile as he lingers at his lover’s left, eyes quick to fall back to the hand that shoves the meat between shifting teeth. He waits, hesitant through the few bites that rock hard against bone and bristle breath between their openings, dark eyes fixed away. “Are you okay?”

“M’fine,” Kurogane huffs.

“Is it hurting—?”

“I just need a few more hours to get used to it. It’s fine.”

Fai turns away with pale brows arching high, breathing caught in a tired huff before he draws his glass to his lips once more. Kurogane’s thumb teases at the dip of metal tongs into thin handle, toying with the fork in distracted presses, light then firm then light again. He swallows, unheard through the chaos of conversation.

“God, what I wouldn’t give to get the strength _his_ has got—”

The press turns murderous, unrestrained; the head of the fork bends with the burning crack of a pole splitting, and snaps clean off, metal prongs clattering into a shrill thunderstrike as they clang against the stem of a nearby champagne glass and rattle heavily to the table. The conversation breaks, muttering into a startled hush as multiple heads turn with chortled gasps to search for the presumed glass shattered on the floor.

Fai stares in dizzied silence at the splatters of grease that litter the tablecloth, eyes crawling back slow to the whitened press of synthetic thumb, wired veins glowing eerily bright beneath skin drawn taunt where the broken ridge of steel hangs crooked into a half-cresent.

His lover _fumes_ , eyes bristling fire-red; his aura surges, pounding and ash and bitter heat as he pushes himself to his feet, awkwardly, napkin thrown from his thigh to bury the clatter of the silverware dropped to his plate.

“Kuro—”

“I’m going upstairs,” he growls, and storms off, earning nothing but a nervous giggle from the girl at the end of the table. Syaoran, standing wide-eyed across the room, looks fast between blue eyes heating with helpless frustration and a retreating black back, quick to leave his cakes deserted and scramble after the glossy door that swings shut.

The hand that puddles a drooping crown of fair fringe does little to stop the rumbling sigh that heaves between parted lips, Fai’s palm smudging to his temple and eyes squeezing shut as he just _breathes_ , the silence awkward and whispers too loud, the aftertaste of wine too dry on his tongue.

(He knows he shouldn’t say anything, just get up and _leave_ , because _fuck it_ —but the anger that boils in him needs somewhere to land, something to justify _why_ , and the lukewarm sting of his next swallow is enough courage to send it flying.)

His glass cracks to the table, more dramatic than necessary, but it draws the three pairs of eyes he had intended and a considerable set of outliers as he shoves himself from his seat, hair left disheveled and eyes ice.

“I won’t say he can’t be a child, at times—but your _brain_ , real or not, deserves to get used once in a while,” he says, loud and venomous, “Give it a try next time, instead of your mouth.”

The woman across from him baffles into speechlessness, golden hands shrinking closer inward and eyes holding wide to his piercing glare. He studies her like a corrupt official unveiled, and his brows jerk into a guiltless arch before he smiles, sickeningly stale, and leaves.

He can’t care if he’s rude; he has to pick up the pieces, first.

“ “ “

The elevator door squeaks shut before Syaoran can catch it, his head flying back with an exasperated groan as his steps stumble to a halt.

He dances on his toes, impatient, as he waits for the second elevator to climb up from the lobby, diving between parting doors at first chance and smacking the button for the thirty-second floor.

(It’s a stray guess, a frantic one, but he has little room to care for the chance of error; he may have stood on the sidelines through everything the past few weeks, but the need to do something, _say_ something, now, is overwhelming.)

“Kurogane-san!”

He finds him on the hallway that branches left from the elevator, the skyline spilling out in a twinkling wash of navy and black and light across the wall of glass closing them in. The man he sprints to tilts his head, a fair enough acknowledgement as he shifts his weight on his hip, hands pocketed.

“Thought you were getting dessert, kid,” he mutters.

Syaoran stops, heavy on his feet as he raises one hand to palm the back of his neck. His words tumble out from a heaving chest, worming aimless around unspoken motives.

“Well, you—you just left, and I was…and Fai-san looked…upset.”

“Then you shouldn’t’ve left him.”

Kurogane’s gaze doesn’t waver from the skyline, though the unexpected quietness of his voice draws Syaoran still, heart hammering and head tilted. He blinks and teeters and twists his lips at a frown, brow pinching awkwardly.

“Well, you—did he saying something?” he murmurs, “I mean, I—I know things have been…you know…but, I—”

“I broke a fork,” Kurogane drops, deadpanned. Syaoran blinks rapidly.

“A—a fork?”

“A fuckin’ _fork_.” He huffs out a hard breath, brow twisting tight. “’Cause this—the bastards there were all, whatever—and this hand, this—” He swallows down a rumbling grunt, frustrated and wordless as it sits in his chest, left hand clenching beneath his pocket. “This whole…thing, it’s…weird.”

(He can feel the boy staring at him—eyeing him up like an unseen specimen, some new project to analyze and understand—and it draws an odd shiver down his spine, face coloring strangely and stomach twisting.)

“Just…forget it.”

“I just—I…I want to make sure you’re okay?” Syaoran says, and the twinge at the end betrays him, hanging high enough to speak clear to his own doubts.

“I’m fine. Not sure about the Mage, though.”

“W-Well, it…doesn’t seem fine,” the boy prods on, “I mean, I feel like…if it was fine, you wouldn’t have left—and, I mean, you and Fai-san haven’t been talking as much, recently—”

“That desert hellhole wasn’t the place to talk in,” Kurogane cuts in. His eyes flicker to the boy’s with brows slightly furrowed, a pinch of confusion and a hint of frustration. “You shouldn’t be worrying about that, anyways.”

“But this started before that.” Syaoran blinks up at him, swallowing slow. “In Serena, when we were in that cave, you two just…stopped talking. Neither of you brought up why.”

Kurogane sighs, rustling deep beneath his chest.

“Water messes with it,” he says, flatly, after a pause. “The arm.”

The boy looks down, brows tightening at a furrow before he glances back up at the man before him.

“But you’ve—you’ve been in water before, since the replacement—”

“Temperature fucks with it, water fucks with it—” His eyes snap shut, nostrils flaring. “…Messes, with it.” Ruddy eyes blink open to look down at the map of highways a dizzying amount of stories below. “It’s mechanical, kid.”

Syaoran swallows quietly.

“Did Fai-san know that…?”

“He knew that _then_. Why’d you think we stopped talking?”

Kurogane stares firm at the sea of skyscrapers that bloom beyond, jaw clenching tight at the quiet that bubbles around them. The boy beside him looks away, an uncomfortable tick in his fingers that strengthens as his courage grows, brow twisting tighter.

“Well, what about after that?” he says. “Talking, I mean. Or just—doing something—”

“I’ve done what I can,” Kurogane snaps. “How the Mage chooses to see it is his decision. He knows already how I feel about it.”

Syaoran blinks down at the carpet, fingers speckled at dark pockets.

“Kurogane-san,” he mumbles, and then clears his throat, almond brows pinching tight, “I, well—respectfully, I think you’re in denial.”

He blinks at the boy as though he’s sprouted ten heads and spoken in tongues, mouth falling into a half-formed _Hah?_

“I mean, you,” Syaoran stumbles on, “You and Fai-san have been close, for a long time—”

“‘Close’ doesn’t scrape the surface,” Kurogane says lowly, dark eyes cutting away.

“W-Well—trust each other—”

“More than _trust_ ,” he spits out, ruddy gaze ripping back to pierce the boy’s own firming stare. “What are you getting at?”

“Well— _well_ , you’re not showing it,” Syaoran blurts, “At least, not to Fai-san. He deserves to know, as much as I do, the truth about how you feel, and he—he already _knows_ , and you lying around it is only hurting him.”

Bloody eyes narrow, a broad chest swelling with a tense breath as Kurogane’s fingers turn to brace against forearms, touch creasing deep.

“That’s not his responsibility,” he mutters, softer on the edges and bleeding thick. “He acts like there’s this…weight on him, now; that somehow he has to _repay_ me.” Nails bite to skin, brow knitting tight. “He’s put that burden on himself.”

Hazel eyes prickle with confusion as Syaoran’s gaze bores into his own and then flickers to the wall, palms curling soft. “That doesn’t mean he can’t _want_ to take care of you.”

“He shouldn’t have to—”

“Well, he _does_!”

The boy’s mouth curls at a tight frown, strikingly solemn and aged for so young a face—and it’s times like these that Kurogane forgets; that even _he_ has faced as much tragedy and loss to rival the two of them combined, that he has seen his own horrors and then some, with little choice but to live on, childhood abandoned to only scraps of light that time allots him to nurture and grow, now.

“Whether you like it or not, that’s what _he_ wants,” Syaoran continues, something in his eyes muddling and bitter (because stolen memories and stolen lovers and stolen parents had never been things _he_ had desired, either), “And Fai-san has done an awful damn lot of putting up with what you’ve wanted, when there were times I know he wanted nothing of it—and if he respected you enough to give up his control then, well, he deserves the same.”

Kurogane stares hard at the boy, dark brow unfurling slow into a small twist and hands clenching tense to his sleeves.

“Those…the circumstances aren’t the same,” he says, words clinging numbly to his tongue as he swallows and looks down, “I did this because I _wanted_ to. I made that choice knowingly. And I can handle that choice how I choose—all the Mage needs to worry about—”

“ _Fai-san_ ,” Syaoran cuts in, “Can worry about what he _wants_ —”

“Kid, you don’t get it—”

“How do you think it felt for Sakura-hime, knowing I would leave her again? That I may never truly _return_?” Syaoran maneuvers himself in front of thick muscle and burning eyes, standing his ground still despite the crane in this neck, the smallness of his frame. “I know _full_ well the burden of having decisions made outside of your control! And whether you chose to make that decision or not, at the time, it _was_ out of your control! And what’s happened after the fact has been out of your control, and the whole _situation_ has been out of Fai-san’s control—and you can’t pretend it’s fine when it’s not! What makes you any different from everything you and him have fought over, if that’s the way you’re going to treat it?!”

The words cut deep, not drawing a sound from rigid shoulders and tightened palms as auburn eyes rest silently on gleaming brown, throat bobbing into a slow swallow. Kurogane doesn’t look away, even as the heat of shame begins to twist in his gut—that it is a child (his _son_ ) having to tell him this, to drive blades deep beneath his breast until he bleeds enough to _see_.

“After all he’s given up for you,” the boy drives on, “The _least_ you can do is acknowledge what you have given up, too, instead of making him feel as though he has to fight to _earn_ it—”

“I don’t need you making assumptions,” Kurogane cuts in, thundering and low as he presses one step closer, Syaoran’s ankles wobbling with his effort to stay grounded. “Now, I _get it_ , that you care for him, just as _I_ do—but if we have problems, we gotta be the one’s sorting it out. We never involved ourselves in what you and the princess were going through, outside what you asked of us—and I don’t remember asking you to play lawyer.”

Syaoran’s lashes flicker and his brows twitch angrily, a protest already building between squeezed lips, and Kurogane can see it as it burns up his throat, ready to tear free and _bite_.

(His palm moves on its own accord, hand of metal and wire and circuits, a sudden weight where it clamps onto tousled locks; its touch melts across the boy’s spine like spellwork, a heavy thing that wordlessly calls to quiet, to _breathe_.)

“You belong beside us,” Kurogane says, gently, and the husky timber of it breaks somewhere in the middle, building with an emotion he can’t bring himself to care to hide, “Not between.”

The boy blinks at him, goldish eyes growing wide and chest rustling quiet. That palm shifts from neck to shoulder, pressing into a reassuring squeeze, and Syaoran flusters into speechlessness, anger swallowed and head nodding slow.

“Get some sleep,” mutters Kurogane. “I doubt anyone at that godforsaken dinner is gonna miss us, at this point.”

The boy chuckles a little at that, and it draws a smirk onto his face, voice rumbling soft as he nudges him off towards the hall.

“I’ve…got some things to tell _Chichi_ about,” he continues, words coming thick and quiet, and the term of endearment pulls a wider smile from Syaoran’s mouth, eyes flicking back with a quiet glow. The boy nods again, obedient, and shuffles slight on his toes before turning to search for his own room.

Kurogane doesn’t watch him for long. His eyes are quick to return to black and blue and bright, throat bobbing into a hard swallow (because the kid is _right_ , and the sting of it gnaws at him).

He sucks in a heavy breath, rustling painfully between his lungs. He is slower to find his way back.  

“ “ “

“Fai,” whispers a muddled voice, a quiet knife into his bones when he feels a small tug on his pantleg. “Fai, we should go.”

“That’s not his responsibility,” comes Kurogane’s voice, growled low from the space that spills beyond the corner. “He acts like there’s this…weight on him, now; that somehow he has to _repay_ me. He’s put that burden on himself.”

“That doesn’t mean he can’t _want_ to take care of you.”

“He shouldn’t have to—”

“Well, he _does_!”

“ _Fai_ ,” the voice says again, sharper, and he starts, eyes blinking slow as he glances down at the little white creature peering up at him with a small frown. The conversation hangs distantly outside his vision, half-heard as his fingers prickle into fists, cheek flexing and lungs full.

“I’m sorry, Moko-chan,” he murmurs, stooping down to his heels to hold up an open palm. “I didn’t know you followed me.”

She leaps atop his fingers with fluffy ears hanging limp, the ruby jewel upon them jingling quietly.

“Kuro-tan and Syao-kun ran off in a big hurry,” she puffs, “And then you did, too. Are you upset?”

“I’m not upset,” Fai assures, smile slanting bittersweet as he pulls himself back to his feet.

“—all the Mage needs to worry about—”

“ _Fai-san_ can worry about what he _wants_ —”

“Kid, you don’t get it—”

“He shouldn’t be arguing with him,” Fai mutters, head cutting to fix his eyes upon the sharp point of the wall. “He’s just a boy.”

Mokona squirms slightly in his palm, one paw toying into small tugs against a jeweled ear.

“Syao-kun cares an awful lot about you,” she hums, an unspoken plural.

(Hearing so is far from a shock—for he’s known it for years now, known it even before the lot of them _meant_ something—yet, still, the words dig into a strange place, twisting tight between his ribs.

Does _you_ still mean _you and him_ , anymore?)

“Yes, I suppose he does,” he whispers then, and looks down.

The sound of gruffening voices, volumes raised and words piercing, floats hazily beyond the hall, a half-heard echo as he blinks at the floor. His feet carry him long before his mind can catch up, the urge to move, to get _away_ , a desperate burn beneath his skin; by the time he is standing in their bathroom, where towel stays slung aside and soap stays clattered firm, Mokona’s weight is gone from him and the reflection that stares back through a sheet of glass weighs upon him like lead through water.

He feels _heavy_ —heavy eyes, heavy limbs, heavy heart, heavy fingers that lift to clench numbly about the buttons on his shirt.

He tracks the movement with an absent focus, foggy on the edges as plastic pops from cotton and white parts to fair skin, looking too hollow in the dim light. He peels the fabric from his shoulders like tape from a bandage, and it falls into a snowish heap, clattering against tile into an odd clitter of _stop stop stop_.

( _Breathe_.)

The button on his slacks snaps off quicker, loose fabric tugged down narrow hips to slump at his toes, and the elastic band of his undergarments swept off next, the air cold and sharp and empty.

He stares at himself. It’s the same skin, the same body; sun-splotched from weeks of torturous heat, collar a sharp curve and fingers thin and muscle and bone puffing out with a slow breath. His eyes sweep from thigh to neck, and then stutter higher.

Fingertips raise on their own accord to flutter over a strewn fringe, tucked behind ears just faintly angular. It takes the span of a breath for their twin pair to meet at the side of his neck, scarred skin brushing slow across the heat of his pulse before finding the tie that knots the bun twisted at the base of his neck; the ribbon jolts away, the ends of his hair pooling into a curling tangle of white-gold.

There is nothing he can feel, staring at himself like this, but _him_ —the him he has always known, strewn hair and fair skin and cold air and alone.

(Years of ember-lit stares and raven hair tangled coarsely between his fingers and pounding pulse and _togetherness_ had spoiled him—turned him from a prince with bloody crown abandoned and titles torn, false-smiled and glacier walls built ten feet tall, to a man starved of touch and all forms of closeness ever given.

The fear of losing it all, after so much, so quickly, cripples him.)

His fingers find his abdomen, tracing valleys of muscle and tendon with a numb touch to follow the hollow of his sternum, the line of his neck. Any memory that could be contained within it, of the sensation he _craves_ —of callouses rigid and skin warm, nipping teeth and burning palms following the curve of neck and spine—falls flat.

(It is only him.)

He twists his fingers through his hair and breathes tight and swallows, only a dull heartbeat before he finds himself climbing into the shower, steps clumsy against high-set porcelain. The water starts as a piercing shock before bleeding in a wash of liquid heart across the tension in his bones; he sighs into it, melts with it, until the floor cradles him into an odd knot with gangly legs bent and head pressed firm to wetting tile, dreading the way his body can already feel it coming.

(His brow is tight and mouth twitching, lashes pressed firm to the downpour, but the prickling sensation of heat and anger and _empty_ sting with a comfort he needs, no matter how it hurts.)

He lifts a wet palm to cradle the sag of his temple, shoulders caving. He doesn’t care to muffle the way the first sound tears from clenched teeth into an ugly choke, echoing sharp against walls caved in.

But he _needs_ it.

So he lets himself break, slowly.

“ “ “

He doesn’t expect the first thing he sees to be his lover sitting across their shared bed; the sight startles him, steps caught into a half-press as the steam from a door left open chases after his heels, robe tied loosely around his waist and hands buried within its pockets.

His lashes flutter and his lips draw shut, any embarrassment for the puffiness of his eyes or the lingering flush staining his cheeks squashed as he lands on the dismal flicker in bloody-brown, the man across the room drawn tight as a bowstring ready to snap.

Kurogane sniffs, swallows, dark brows pulled low and fingers tapping against the bare ridges of muscle where they are braced.

“Hey,” he mutters, without looking up.

Fai blinks at him, voice rasping just a breadth too hoarse when it finds itself.

“Hi.”

The man across draws in a thick inhale, bared skin expanding beneath clenched arms, a canvas of sharp bone and firm muscle and rolling abdomen that speckles into a line of dark hair, swept quick beneath the knot of aged _hakama_.

The sight worms beneath Fai’s skin into a scratching burn, tremoring with the desperateness to stalk fast to him, to pound knuckle to chest and send the other man fleeing beneath a horde of poisonous threats; with the same dizzying strength, his fingers ache to tear knotted cotton apart and kiss down scar-speckled thighs, to press his temple to pulsing hip and feel the flat heat of shuddering abdomen and remember the feeling of _control_.

(The strongest of them all grits inside him into a bitter knot, shoulders caving with the desperation for them to just _talk_ , hearts re-opened and palms no longer empty.)

“Come here,” Kurogane says, and the gruff softness of it is more than enough for Fai to cling to buried hopes and walk, listless, damp hair cool against his neck as he pads slowly to the bedside.

“Sit down,” he continues, a stiff breath, “Just—just sit down.”

Fai feels his throat bob as he watches those eyes narrow, cheeks hollowed, his fingers twisting against themselves beneath his pockets before he sinks slowly to white sheets, a few good feet away.

(The distance is unintentional, but in his apprehension for whatever words will come next, it is its own wall—constructed quick and wordless, his eyes casting away, hanging on the desperation to know what will follow.)

The rattle of the air vents by the floors and the faint echoes of traffic from the window before him nestle into the space between, a needed blanket before the silence breaks.

“You’re right.”

The words tumble from Kurogane’s lips slowly, a messy thing, clinging reluctant to his tongue as dark brows knit into a furrow. He drags in a tense breath, bared chest swelling broad with the flare of his nostrils as he stares firm at his feet. His fingers speckle across the ridge of one bicep, dimpling deep enough to bruise as that breath leaves him in a heavy rush, words jumbled behind his teeth.

“I—you’re _right_. And I’m sorry.”

Fai blinks at him, speechless in the suddenness of it all. His brow wrinkles slow as his eyes flit from the nervous _tap-tapping_ against dusky skin to the flick of bloody eyes towards the window across the room, the glow of the city muted through its curtains.

“I just—” Kurogane’s jaw clenches, tongue bitten as silence cloaks his efforts to process, to _wait_. His gaze tears back to the sheets; tapping fades to a tight squeeze, shoulder shifting and ankle bobbing absent.

The words get dragged from him one by one, like ore from rough earth, each admission chipping his resolve away until there is nothing left.

“It’s hurt,” he says bluntly. “It’s hurt like hell. Didn’t help that those bastards did their worst to rip the fucking thing off, but it’s always…it’s always hurt.” Teeth grind and lashes flicker as his eyes cut down, discomfort swelling beneath his lungs. “And I didn’t want to admit that to you because I didn’t want—I didn’t want _that_ to be the only thing you saw, when you looked at me.”

He draws in a hoarse breath, mouth creasing thin.

“And it already is.”

Blood boils beneath Fai’s skin as the need to cut in strips him of his patience, words aching with exasperation.

“That’s not—”

“It _is_!” Kurogane barks, and the pierce of his glare is quick as a dagger drawn. “I see it in your eyes, every time to look at me, every time you think I’m not looking—you see the pain it’s caused me; the pain _you_ think you caused me.” His eyes linger, bright as a flame. “I did it _myself_.”

Fai’s brows knits tight, jaw flexing firm.

His lover heaves out a great breath, lips clenched as his head knocks back against the headboard with a dull _thwunk_. His throat bobs and his eyes dart away and his teeth grind slow, frustration flushing deep beneath his skin.

“I didn’t do this for _you_ ,” he grits out, “I did it because the thought of having to live on without you, after everything—having to just leave you there, like you meant _nothing_ , like none of it mattered, like you had never left any mark on _me_ …”

Fai stares at him, silent, chest tearing brittle strand by strand. Kurogane’s eyes burn beneath furrowed brow as he swallows fast, eyes still fixed firmly away.

“I didn’t care what I had to do,” he mutters. “I would have torn down that entire damned dimension myself, if that meant I could stay with you.”

His fingers clench to fists against his skin, flesh synthetic and real drawing white across bone, and his voice tumbles into a hoarse growl, frail as leaves scattered through a storm and hard as iron.

“So don’t you _dare_ make it seem like I cut off a limb out of pity,” he spits, and his words slice cold to silence.

Fai stares with eyes soft and mouth tense where his lover’s own gaze is turned away (not out of shame, but bitterness, _spite_ ), an ache starting in his toes and curling to his breast, hot as embers where the effect of those words bleed through him. He turns his head away, eyes squeezing shut.

“That’s…not how I see it,” he murmurs, “That’s never how I’ve seen it. I…”

A chuckle starts on his tongue and sticks, throaty and raw, drawing dark eyes towards the lull its sound creates as Fai blinks at the carpet.

“I have had few lovers in my life,” he says, head shaking absent, “And half of them have been stubborn enough to send cities up in smoke, but _you_ …” Fai sighs, wistful and melancholic. “I knew, from the moment we spent that first night together—I _knew_ that you would destroy me. You would rip down every wall I had, and dig inside and tear me apart, and not take any lie I would give you—and I _needed_ that. But…I refused to have it, and…”

Fair lashes flutter, lost for words as those eyes wander, soft and brittle and iron at once.

“You were…everything I _loved_ —you always have been; reckless, and powerful, and temperamental, and sensitive, and warm, and _raw_ …and I knew falling in love with you would break every resolve I had.”

Fai’s teeth carve a line against his cheek, brow knitted as his shoulders slump, one palm bunched loosely into the cloth of his sleeve.

“I did it, anyway.”

He turns his eyes down, pooling warm as he fights to keep composure, voice clinging still to steadiness.

“I’ve never… _loved_ so much—I’ve never _been_ so loved, and for that to even happen from my lowest point…I was terrified of losing that, too. Of losing you.” He swallows, chest tight. “Because I know you would kill for me. I know you would _die_ —as much as you act like you never would, as much as you’ve beaten it into my own head that life is _worth_ something—I _know_ you would give up anything for me. You’re a reckless _fool_ , and you always have been.”

Fai sucks in a tense breath through his teeth, eyes glinting raw as they wander across the floor.

“Hearing you lie like that, it…it _breaks_ me, because I…”

His head falls back into a hoarse swallow, eyes searching desperate across the ceiling for some distraction, _something_ to pull himself from the ache of regret that knifes between his lungs.

“You what?” mutters Kurogane, and the roll of the mattress beneath him is too distant for Fai to grasp as his nails bite against skin and his lashes flicker, eyes cold where they rest on the blur of the city night.

“Because _I_ did that,” he snaps, ugly and frail, “ _I_ put you through hell, and I have no idea how you could come out of that _wanting_ me—I’ve seen you lie through your teeth every day, for months, and I’ve _hated_ it, because…”

Kurogane pushes out a tight breath, fingers creasing soft into the sheets that wrinkle beneath the weight of the thigh beside him.

(The parallel need not be spoken; the fragility of his posture speaks to it all, trapped in waves of disgust and contempt, a reflection he has had no desire to have forced upon him.)

“I dealt with your bullshit, because I _love_ you,” Kurogane says flatly, and the lack of a past tense makes Fai’s heart squeeze painfully. “I stayed, because I love you; I _fought_ , because I love you.”

Bloody eyes fix away, breath rustling into a violent sweep.

“And maybe you see it differently than I do, but fuck it, Mage, I _did it_ , because I love you.”

Fair cheeks sting with the flush of emotion that stirs beneath his skin, such boldened confessions still far too foreign for him to handle.

“You think I doubt that…?” he whispers, “You think I don’t _know_? That’s what—it _terrifies_ me, having so…so much, and feeling like I’ve…like I haven’t…” He stumbles through a great heaving breath, tongue numb and lips drawn thin, before he forces the words out, painfully, like blood drawn. “Like I don’t…deserve it.”

Silence settles uncomfortably, a drowning fog broken only by the heavy rustle of a bared chest, and Kurogane’s voice is soft as a breeze’s touch, rumbling quiet behind him.

“Do I not deserve you?”

Fai _jolts_ , blood boiling as he whips around to face him (his lover, his _idiot_ ) out of sheer shock.

“Don’t you dare say that,” he seethes, “I love you with every shred of myself I can give, more than I’ve loved anyone before; it doesn’t matter whether you _deserve_ it—I _give_ that to you, willingly.”

“Then what makes you unworthy of _mine_?” Kurogane hisses, and the words cut sharp as glass.

Fai blinks at him, eyes wide. His heart pounds wild beneath his breast as the wrinkle of his lips falls and realization settles upon him, washing sickly across his spine.

(It had never been about pain and iron bone and severed limb, just it had never been about a body transformed and a blood-bond drawn—it had only ever been about _them_.)

“If it takes years for me to get that through your thick skull—to prove that _this_ —” Kurogane’s left palm raises to cradle soft over the hollows of a pale cheek, cool thumb skittering to hover light across the shell of his ear, “—changes _nothing_ , so be it. If I have to say it to you every night, I will. And if I can’t tell you, I’ll _show_ you.”

The cold-hot press of synthetic skin running calloused down the line of damp hair and a bared neck draws a flush of an entirely different nature across Fai’s cheeks, throat bobbing hard against the slow touch that lingers over every inch it falls until settling in the bared dip of his sternum.

Kurogane’s eyes are burning-hot, part mule-headed obstinance and part-crackling passion that draws Fai’s lungs tight and knees weak, toes clenching numb against the carpet.

“I mean, I’d…be a pretty fuckin’ lousy lover if I couldn’t at least do that, right?” mutters the man before him (wild-haired and scarred skin and warrior and _healer_ , aura crisp as a summer’s night and spiced with a musk that sends Fai’s mental state plummeting), and the slight quirk of dusk lips is met with a crinkle of dark-lashed eyes at the corners and a throaty chuckle that is all wolf-cub and no scaled beast.

(It’s unexpected, a rare gift to see on such a chiseled face, and Fai floats aimlessly in a swooping detour of fluttering pulse and hot cheeks at the _softness_ , skin set aflame.)

He flounders, breath stuttering, and then laughs, because he can think of nothing else to pull him from his childish flush—but it is warm and _real_ as his hands raise to clasp gentle about the fingers that linger at his skin, drawing them high enough to press a kiss to cool knuckles.

“Yes, I suppose so,” is what he says, lingering on a chuckle, and the blue eyes that peek up between a tangled fringe are glittering and soft.

The smile that blooms across Kurogane’s cheek is full-teeth and slanted deeper at one side, and it tears Fai’s efforts full from him into another flustered response as the man before him prowls closer, hand turning inward to tilt up a dimpled chin.

“ _Suppose_ so, huh?” he says, lilting and deep. “Well, I _suppose_ I’ve done my fair share of telling.”

Implications blow south in an instant, setting Fai’s ears aglow at the husky timber that rears its wings within the rumble of that voice. Kurogane draws him closer with nothing more than a light tug over a fair chin, knees rolling into a clumsy shift between the folds of white terrycloth.

There is nothing he can see but broad and toned and golden-glowed, his lover’s body a marvel on any given day, delicious beneath the drag of his own greedy fingertips and downright _lethal_ when perched over his own; he is dry-mouthed and shivering already at just the view, eyes raking from rolling muscle to tilting neck to flutter wide at the closeness of ember-lit bloody-brown, a dark nose brushing light over his own.

(The musk of earth and charred spice fills him, his aura gleaming dangerously strong and deafening with its wanting, its hunger, its _now_ as their lips brush into a mingle of hot breath, and Fai’s eyes snap shut.)

Those lips tease, somewhat chapped and breathtakingly full where they skitter across the tilt of his open mouth, rasping up a fair cheek as synthetic skin climbs up the back of his neck to curl around golden hair, damp waves twisting gently into a light tug.

Fai is already biting back a groan by the time his head slumps into the cradle of his lover’s shoulder, bone and muscle pressing firm to the roll of his temple.

“Can’t help it if I’m stubborn, can I?” Kurogane mutters, and is met with a rush of breath spilling down across his breastbone, Fai chuckling earnest into his skin.

“Oh, your stubbornness is _without_ compare,” he affirms, brows arching helplessly with a wide grin.

“Then you better know by now that I’m not giving up on you,” says the man before him, stern and soft at once, and the touch of cool metal behind callouses pulsing with electric life glides across the line of his neck, drawing his lungs shut as their touch carries the tagline of his robe’s collar with them, cotton brushing over the swell of one shoulder before falling heavy to pool into his elbow’s crease.

“And if by tonight, you still don’t believe me,” Kurogane rumbles, hand of blood and bone raising to squeeze into a warm press over collarbone and neck, sliding with dangerous heat down a ringlet of pink skin and the swell of hitching breath to trace every line of shuddering abdomen, “I’ll consider my job poorly done.”

Fai’s pulse stings electric and his breath stutters into a swallowed gasp as weathered fingertips chase farther, tugging impatient at the knot at his waist to dive down flat muscle and golden curls until palming across the line of heat that sends shockwaves from his toes to his fingertips, a choked moan muffled wetly into the press of a tanned shoulder as knees glide farther and spine rolls into a limp arch.

“And I’m just getting started,” Kurogane growls, teeth teasing light over a pale neck with enough force to make Fai’s stomach bottom out completely.

The promise (the _threat_ ) settles into a quiver beneath Fai’s bones, heart roaring hungrily beneath the pound of his skin as midnight eyes track his lover like a lion in the night.

(One beast inevitably draws out another, threads of gold glinting animalistic through strands of blonde as Fai tilts his head up, one palm dragging clawed and hot up the tight swell of bronzed muscle; It pulls an encouraging rumble from his lover’s throat and wrenches a needy whimper from his own—and like the crash of a storm, he is on him.)

Caught breaths are swallowed between chasing lips as touch turns sweltering, pale fingers cording firm through raven hair as he drags himself closer. It is not enough, not now—and yet his heart _pounds_ , boyish and raw beneath the wolfish grin that blooms against his teeth.

“Eager, are we?” comes the rumbling murmur, dark lashes hanging low across gleaming eyes as Kurogane parts from him to steal a puff of heated breath. His hands fall with delicious weight to squeeze down swelling ribs and narrow waist and firm hips as Fai slings one thigh around the parting width of his own, the other skittering across black fabric in a silky hush.

“The only thing I’ve _wanted_ ,” Fai whispers, throaty and purring and _deep_ , and the primal tingle of it shudders clear down the line of his lover’s spine as fair hands snake around a thick neck to thumb over the pulse that pounds beneath tendons drawn taught. One hand waits before smoothing farther, melting across the curve of his left shoulder before tracing down the seam near-invisible where flesh and iron meet. “Is to be close to you.”

He lingers, longer than needed—but it is here that his attention, for just this moment, is needed the most; bluish eyes do not stray away, unquestioning and unburdened at the way electric veins pulse just squintably brighter, at the coarse texture of synthetized skin that blends from real to artificial, his fingertips chasing the new territory its marker opens without feeling the slightest twinge of otherness.

(Even when that arm had been nothing but wire and steel—when the scent of mountain pines had chased through the open veranda and settled beneath of folds of shed kimonos, when metal had glistened with sweat and cold fingers had turned to fire beneath the heat of their skin—it had never felt _different_.)

Kurogane’s palm turns with the descent of his own, fingers once bare now ridged to the touch, familiar, nail and callouses and mapping vein that settle against the scarred curves of his own when they turn to twist together.

(He had never shied away his own visible wounds, even as morose as their beginnings had been.)

The touch of full lips catches him off guard, fair lashes blinking rapidly when the tilt of his lover’s head jolts them together; he sinks into the kiss slowly, all tension swept from him like grime beneath pouring rain as the hand at a broad neck climbs higher, nails curling light into dark hair, drawing a rumbling hum from the chest that heaves against his own as tanned fingers dig within his hip to drag him closer.

They part into a pant of breath before Kurogane chases him farther, and Fai struggles to swallow down a building groan when the clack of their teeth melts into the wet heat of a thick tongue licking against his own, calloused fingertips grappling farther to glide over the small of his back and then squeeze lower.

“How’s that for close?” Kurogane rasps, when the bounce of their parting mouths leads to scattered breath and chasing nips of teeth, and Fai’s composure is torn four pegs lower when their eyes meet, sweltering as smoked flames.

“Getting there,” he purrs, and feels no shame for the way his tongue sweeps devious across his own lips, pulling the darkened state of bloody eyes a full shade deeper.

He dives back in with enough force to send Kurogane bouncing to the mattress beneath him; hot fingers bite into his thigh as a warming palm chases into fair hair, clenching firm to keep the blistering heat of their next kiss upon him, and it is only on their next part of breath that a broad elbow digs into the mattress to send them rolling, sheets a plush anchor beneath Fai’s back as he jolts to them.

The grin that dimples his cheeks is _lethal_ , a close match to the wolfish smirk that bows to pay homage to the flat line of his sternum and mark farther, kissing up the flushed line of bared neck to follow the strain of his head to arch into the sheets.

“We’re going to—need silencing charms, at this rate,” Fai gasps, half-groaned and lips bitten as molten touch dives between them to palm heavily down heaving chest before tangling into the knot of cotton above.

Kurogane’s teeth make a point of biting into the pulse-point beneath his tongue, and he snaps his head back farther, spine arching with a breathless splutter.

“ _Fuck_ —”

“We got pillows, don’t we?” rumbles Kurogane, and the teasing glint in dark eyes is enough to make his lungs nearly collapse. Lukewarm fingers chase up his right arm to draw wrist up and back, pressed heavily into the foam of the mattress.

“Yes,” Fai pants, soft and blunt. The grin bitten beneath his teeth blooms wider as his fingers spread open to welcome the metallic tangle of his lover’s own, head tilted to meet his breathless smirk before it lands. “Yes, we do.”

“ “ “

Mokona’s magic, as _hitsuzen_ so often deems it, can only be so forgiving.

They are given enough time for breakfast and nearly an hour following to soak in the peace of the city at morning, a final breath of quiet before her spellwork calls to her, gleaming into an opalish shimmer that sends emotions careening to a frantic rush.

Syaoran bumbles into their cluster, the most disorganized of them all as he grabbles their satchels closer and searches frantic for anything that may be left behind. The circle is drawn before they can well-right themselves, thighs knocking for balance as they huddle to stay close through the thrash of her magic.

Fai reaches out to hold the boy close, instinctive through the waves as he braces his shoulders beneath the crook of his elbow and holds gently to his arm, feeling his own sleeve tugged tight as Piffle melts muddily from their vision.

(There is no telling where they will land next, and no promise of it being their last. Yet, something about the fact has grown comforting, now.)

Kurogane hunches beside him, broad shoulder knocking stiff to his own as the sickening wash of vertigo sweeps up their legs, gravity left and reality bled free.

Through the swarm of it, Fai clings tight to a held breath and waits, feet numb with the anticipation of the jolt of their next landing. Kurogane’s knuckles bump his own, sudden through the blur of it all, but it feels natural as anything for Fai to turn his palm to let his fingertips chase across the cool lines of them.

His lover plucks the hint from him and sends it reeling past their feet as his fingers twist firm within his own to tangle into a tight squeeze.

(It’s a promise, this he knows—no less powerful than the first, but surging warm with its reminder; it’s _always_.)

Even within the chaos of muddling dimensions, Kurogane finds his eyes—reddish and warped and clothes floating wild—and smirks.

Fai turns their palms closer, shoulder-to-shoulder, and smiles soft and rugged back.

**Author's Note:**

> I conceptualized this idea _years_ ago and lost my original file, but a few months ago I picked it up again. Somewhere through the middle of this, this started becoming a projection piece (and, unsurprisingly, a place for catharsis). I've struggled recently with my relationships, most notably around having arguments - which, as a source of anxiety for me, are things am usually hellbent to avoid. But arguments are necessary, so long as you actually listen. So, guess that was what I was getting at, here (?).
> 
> I was listening nonstop to the album [This Is What Happens](https://open.spotify.com/album/5cIC5jXpCvDiVyfoTiBxzb) while planning out my writing process, and the title pulls directly from Comfort In The Orchestration, which gathers the entire theme into a pretty little bow; life is messy, relationships can suck, communication is hard, and that's all okay. (I'm also a sucker for emotional shit so hhhh bury me)
> 
> Finishing this made me feel really good (procrastinating actual work aside pffhtlp), and I honestly am just dying to keep writing, so - thoughts, feelings, other story ideas?
> 
> Anyways.
> 
> Have a beautiful day. Stay strong, y'all.


End file.
